


Indignant Desert Birds

by Wirrrn



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 10:14:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16637996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wirrrn/pseuds/Wirrrn
Summary: Hiding from everyone, Scully included, in the remotest place he can think of, Mulder is paid a visit by a persistent old... friend?Set sometime after the series finale. Some references to the first movie, "Fight the Future". THERE WAS NO SECOND MOVIE :D





	Indignant Desert Birds

"Do you remember writing in your diary  
that it did not matter if I was friend or enemy,  
Because at least I was someone who understood you,  
and could be talked to?"  
(-George Orwell, NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR)

 

"When you're dancing with a bear,  
it won't let you stop if you get tired"  
-Russian Proverb

 

"...We could cut off your arms and legs  
and you'd still find a way to kick us..."  
-SMILLA'S SENSE FOR SNOW

\- - - 

 

Sub zero in temperature but leeched of all moisture by the howling whiteness expanding outwards to all points of the compass, the winds raced over to the large, squat buildings, plucking and probing at the walls with chill-knife fingers as it sought a way in.

Finding no point of entry, the frigid air whipped around the building with a high keening screech, the window panes making knuckle-cracking sounds as the buffeting storm pushed them deeper into their lintels.

At the sound of the soft snappings from the window frames, Fox Mulder jolted up sharply from the core samples and equipment lists scattered in front of him, before identifying the noise and settling back in his chair. Years out of the Bureau loop meant he no longer instinctively went for the place where his gun used to be at every alien noise

//pardon the pun//

but some sadistic little Junior G-Man on duty in the security booth in his reptile-brain refused to let him relax completely.

Watching the storm fling drift after drift of snow against the glass and Mulder remembered that Thoorsen, the Danish Meteorologist with the hypnotically bobbing Adam's Apple, had warned them that they could expect a severe gale today and should all batten down their respective hatches.

Most of the team had just made a token nod at Thoorsen and gone out anyway, huddled up in their jackets like puffed, Goretex versions of the penguins they were studying, but Mulder, sighing, put down his book

("Dangerous Fauna of the Polar Regions")

Marking his place with one of the Rorschach blots he was supposed to be analyzing

(Miles, the Australian iceberg-expert who'd labeled it as "a discarded sweater unraveling in a closet")

and crossed to the window, securing it against the storm with black duct tape.

Two diagonals.

An X.

Smiling ironically to himself, Mulder added another one to the first; twin X-shapes framed by the Southern night-sky. If he closed one eye and surrendered his depth perception, the far-off lights of the Aurora Australis seemed to be coming from the Xs, the black lines crackling with yellow-blue witchlight.

"...Two X's, Mulder? Either you're trawling for both Deep Throat *and* Covarrubias, or advertising a cut-rate porn sale, am I right?"

Mulder didn't flinch this time, didn't even turn around. Part of him was shocked that he *wasn't* shocked, making him wonder if and for how long he'd been expecting to hear that quiet, Summer-wheat field rasp again.

Mulder finished securing the window, then closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the glass for a moment, feeling the vibrations of the belting snow through the bones of his face as he composed himself. Dusting off his stoic, neutral expression from the mental box he stored it in, Mulder turned, extended mug in hand.

"Coffee?"

-Krycek, of course, has already helped himself to a cup, and is now sitting in Mulder's chair, feet up on the desk as he idly flipped through the stack of Rorschachs. He looked up at the older man with an amiable smile.

"Hey Mulder. Been a while." 

He indicated the inkblots.

"Security checks again, hunh? At least you're only picking through metaphorical shit this time."

Mulder nodded, not trusting his voice yet. He felt his pulse kick over as it was hit by the adrenaline that invariably flooded his system in this man's presence. This biological evidence was one of the things that gave him hope that the younger man wasn't a dream, a hallucination or... whatever this time.

The other was the small, puckered scar high on Krycek's forehead.

Krycek waved one of the Rorschachs at the older man.

"...Stampeding elephants? I'd watch this guy Mulder,this... 'Wilkins, Oologist'. Elephants represent memory, patience; if he sees hostile elephants, then he could be nursing a grudge."

Mulder nodded, impressed. 

"I've already flagged him. Our other Oologist says she's never seen someone handle eggs so sloppily; the other more generic Ornithologists don't trust him much either. He may be a sleeper for one of the PetroChemicals."

He wonders if he dare ask, but the question has already left his lips, he's already nodding down at the paper.

"What do you see?"

Krycek looked down

//Black Oil erupting from a Grey, sending out blind, questioning tendrils in a mindless hunt for warm, living orifices...//

and back up again

"...The same thing you do."

Mulder was as surprised as anyone when the next words out of his mouth were:

"You look thin."

Krycek glanced up with a mamba-strike quickness, caught off guard by the statement. Surprised, and more than a little pleased by the implied concern, he countered:

"...You look tired."

Mulder stamped down on the smile that threatened to erupt beneath his lips and almost succeeded. 

"Yeah, well, Nightmares. That's one of the benefits of this place; two-foot thick insulated walls mean never having to say you're sorry for waking up 49 sleep-deprived researchers whose only recent contact has been with seals and orcas and who haven't seen daylight for five months." 

He glanced at the other man's notably wasted frame.

"So, what's your excuse?"

"...Hey, do you have any idea how many connecting flights I had to take to get here? I was nearly travelatored to death."

"They didn't have food on the planes?"

"...Technically, I suppose you could say they did, if you use the loosest definition; as did my stomach."

"And here I was thinking that once you've dived for a homicidal mutant liver fluke in a sewerage outlet, you could never be grossed out again."

"...If it makes you feel better, I could just nip outside and kill something."

"Anything except the seals. Their flesh is highly toxic this time of the year."

"...Ah yes, our old friend Hypervitaminosis E."

"You saw SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC too, Huh?"

"...I grew up in a sub-zero environment. I even saw a Siberian tiger once."

"In the Ukraine?"

"...No, at the Florida State Zoo; I was on a school field-trip."

Sometime during their conversation, Krycek had scooted up onto the actual surface of Mulder's desk and perched on the edge. Now, swinging his legs in space over the edge of the desk, he leaned forward. "...Can I ask you something, Mulder?"

"You break into my office, use up my daily coffee ration and pop-psych my charges, and *now* you remember your Miss Manners?"

Krycek merely canted his head and brought out the dewy junior G-Man doe-eyed routine he used to wield when they were partners. 

More official partners, anyway.

"Oh please, Krycek. Crab-Eater Seal pups out on the pack ice hit me with those eyes all the time, and I still use the rectal thermometer."

The eyes of a wicked jade dragon flash in the wintery witchlight. "...Just to prove I'm here as a friend, I'm not even going to use any of the gloriously smutty comebacks that you just fed me."

Mulder, who had been wondering whether it was possible that his tongue had become possessed, gratefully accepted the out with a red-faced nod. "So, you had a question?"

..."Why here, Mulder? Why here of all places?"

"I figured that would be it; Well, I could tell you that since they've been here before, it's unlikely they'll be back again."

"...Hiding in plain sight, huh? Have you been back to the Landin-"

"-First day here. Left at the Soorsdal Glacier and straight on 'til morning. There's no sign that the thing was ever there, Krycek; the hole's completely iced over again."

"...It's been years, Mulder. You must have expected that. Why did you come?"

"It's quiet, it's peaceful, everyone's friendly but not too personal..."

"...And Scully would never think to look for you here."

Mulder had forgotten how well they knew each other. 

"Did she...?"

Krycek nodded. "...For a while she did; almost a year, according to my people; then I think she got the message that you really didn't want to be found this time."

"It's... better this way. Better for her and for the baby."

"...Oh yes... the kid she named after your father. The father you hated and who dragged you into all this in the first place..."

"Don't, okay? Just...don't. Skinner helped her?"

Krycek didn't answer, didn't meet his eyes.

Mulder knew when not to press. "So how long have *you* been looking?"

Krycek brightened, the insolent grin returning to his face like an old friend. "...Five weeks."

"That long? You're getting old, Krycek."

"...Hey! I'll have you know that I was onto your sorry ass within five *days*... I would have been here sooner, but you just can't get a bullet train down here you know; I swear that 'Scientific Research Vessels' move so slowly because they're conducting experiments in either time travel or the psychological effects of nigh-immobility on impatient passengers."

Breaking off suddenly, Krycek set the papers aside and turned twin jade beams onto his ex-partner. Mulder was almost sorry to be getting down to the point of all this. He'd been enjoying the causal banter with the younger man; he always had. Most of the researchers were nice enough, but their discussions tended to be either geothermal sciences he had no comprehension of, or about penguins. Now that he'd isolated himself away from Scully, conversation with someone who was his intellectual equal was a rarity. Even better, with Krycek, the visual was just as good as the audio.

Mulder mentally slapped himself and thanked a God he didn't believe in that he didn't say that aloud. Being left to your own devices for large parts of each day tended to make the people here talk out loud to themselves frequently.

"...I'm sorry, Mulder."

*Now* Mulder jumped. These are not words he has expected to ever here from those lips, in any context. He fought the sudden urge to reach over and grab the younger man, make sure he's...corporeal.

"Krycek?"

The former agent's face is a still-life in misery, the head angling down to the floor as though the dour lines are actually exerting gravity and pulling at his flesh.

In a voice even softer and huskier than usual, Krycek breathed. "For...for the last time we saw each other..."

Mulder swallowed past a ball of painful heat that had lodged, wet and thick, in his throat. 

//Krycek helping him helping Scully SuperSoldier ripping Elevator Garage alone Mulder Krycek Gun words Pain Regret Brothers still the Gun Skinner God Stop Enough No!!//

...Even now, Teflon!Mulder tries to shy away from the memory. His clever, cursed brain, though, always his worst opponent, happily coughs up more unwanted scenes though, in excruciating eidactic detail.

God... to hear that gentle voice talking to him lover's words which he'd been wanting to hear for so long, with that cold metal thing pointing at him, seeing that he really *meant* to do it this time... Even then, he'd been more puzzled than frightened. Krycek's words hadn't meshed with his actions, and this was unheard of. Disconnected, unfocused, these were not words associated with the sleek, deadly shadow he knew. Krycek's actions, his words, contradicted each other- they didn't make sense. And Alex Krycek *always* made sense, even if he kept that sense to himself.

Mulder had then seen the hesitation, watched the gun waver, and felt the ground start to shift back to familiar territory again. A familiar, rational light was starting to glow in those emerald lasers, and Mulder had been about to call the younger man on the contradictions, ask him something...

//Alex? How can I help you?//

When Skinner...

//Jesus Walter stop you've gotten rid of the gun just stop he's unarmed//

and a small sick laugh had wanted to escape but then the black leather djinn had crashed to the car exhaust stinking floor and-

-Mulder's head jerked as he literally tried to shake the bad memories out of his skull, as he'd seen people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder do.

Something in Mulder had died on the floor amidst those dormant vehicles that day. He'd lost what little passion for the work he'd had left, never been able to look at Wal...Skinner again the same way again, tried to spend as little time near him as possible.

-And he'd started suffering from a blinding, near-crippling pain in his forehead, just over the third eye. Scully had wanted to take him for a CAT scan, an MRI, but the thought of cold machines holding his head still had horrified him, and after a few days the pain had gone.

Mulder was snapped from his reverie by the sandpaper scrape of the younger man's voice. "I wanted to help, Mulder. You and Scully both." A pause. "...Even the baby, colossal mistake on your part though it was."

"Krycek..." Mulder felt the old anger buzzing around in his skull like a furious yellow-jacket in a soft drink can. He hoped his ex-partner would take the hint and back off, and not flash that smug smirk that always made him slap-happy either.

Sometimes Mulder was amazed at how easily the two of them could push each other's buttons. But then, at eight years, theirs was a marriage that had out-lasted most in Hollywood.

//Wait... did I really just think that?//

Krycek noticed Mulder redden momentarily and wondered if he was about to get another punch in the face, but continued on. "...I was trying to help you, really. I would have gotten you out, Mulder, I need you to know that. I had a plan and everything... if it weren't for that damn injection..."

-All Mulder's attention flew into the bones of his face, his eyes shining with fierce interest like the animal he was named for.

"...I mean, I knew it might have side effects, but" Krycek barked mirthless laughter "...a full blown psychotic episode wasn't exactly what I had in mind..."

Mulder nodded "It wasn't a good look for you A-Krycek. What was it, some kind of new antigen for the Oil?"

"Hmm? Oh, no- So far as I'm aware, the Tunguskan Vaccine is still the standard."

//Tunguska?// Mulder felt as though his brain had just jumped with shock inside his skull.When the Well-Manicured Man had handed him the vaccine in the car, shortly before becoming the Well-Done Man,

//God, that's ....years ago, now//

he'd assumed it had come from the Rebel faction of the Consortium, or, given the dapper gentleman's origins, possibly some lab over at MI-6. But if the vaccine hailed from the Siberian camp itself, there was only one person who could have smuggled it out single-handed

(Mulder winced)

smuggled it out by himself.

//Dammit Alex// he enjoyed the sensual fricatives of the forbidden first name as it echoed through his strange mind //Do you have to make everything clandestine? Even your own nobility?//

Mulder pushed the rising irritation aside, not wanting negative emotions to come into play anymore. He'd wasted too many encounters with this man on hatred and violence and he'd come so very close to losing him, because of it. Despite everything, he found he did not want that. 

"If it wasn't the Antigen, what did you take?"

Krycek looked wary. "...Promise you won't... over-react?"

Mulder dropped his gaze, ashamed. "I'm not going to hit you anymore, Krycek."

"...I was more worried you'd drag me out into the snow and tie me up with the huskies."

"Sled-Dogs are banned here now; I'd have to drag you out into the snow and tie you up with the snowmobiles."

"...Oh, Okay; I took the Nanomachines."

"*WHAT*?! Holy living *fuck*, Alex! Are you stup- no, that's not fair... I know that you of all people are far from stupid; You're obviously just crazy."

Krycek felt simultaneously puzzled, amused and touched. "...Was that a compliment hidden in there Mulder?"

"Don't you know how dangerous those things are? What am I saying? of course you do, you sicced them on Skinner!"

"...And he deserved every one of them. He was... unpredictable around you, Mulder, and unpredictable people make me nervous. Look how sweaty I get around *you*..."

A quicksilver grin from both men.

"...He was forever on the verge of throwing you to the wolves and giving your sorry hide to Cancerman for a wall hanging. The Nanos kept him better behaved towards you."

"But I...you... You know, fuck it, Skinner's not important. What in God's name got into you, Alex? You could have been killed! What possessed you to inject yourself with that- Nightmare?"

Krycek gave a mental shrug

//which is the only type I can really pull off nowadays anyway//

and looked Mulder right in the eye.

"You, Mulder. I did it for you."

Of all the things Mulder had expected to hear, this was not one of them. He opened his mouth to speak- and found he had absolutely no idea what to say. So many emotions pitched and tossed through his head that his face was actually twitching like a hungry rabbit's, and Mulder wondered briefly if he was having an aneurysm.

Finally, Mulder was able to push words past a diaphragm that felt suddenly like unyielding wood instead of pliable muscle.

"What...What do you mean, for me?"

Alex huffed out an uncomfortable sigh. "C'mon Mulder; I'm not *that* obtuse, surely. I've been giving you enough broad hints over the years...and I thought you picked up on them."

A sudden, panicked light in his eyes.

"I wasn't wrong, was I? I mean, you...you are..."

Mulder raised a hand to stop him. "No...I mean yes! I mean no, Alex, you weren't wrong; it's just- what does injecting yourself with microscopic hunter-killer machines have to do with...all that?"

Krycek actually looked sheepish then, even if his facial muscles didn't quite know the trick of it. 

"...My arm, Mulder. I took the bugs to get it back" A bitter smile "...For all the good they did; the little clockwork SOB's can do lead, but not steel, apparently."

Mulder, who had been trying not to stare at the nail-less, too-pink shell of Krycek's left hand, now shifted his gaze to not stare at the scar on the  
younger man's brow. "You mean they healed the gunsho-"

Krycek cut him off "...Do I look like a ghost to you, Mulder?"

"Wouldn't be the first time."

"...Mulder?"

"Nevermind. But why bother with the arm now? Why after so long?"

"...When you vanished, Mulder, you...you took my drive, my reason, my soul, if I've still got one. You took it all with you. I wanted you back. I *needed* you back. I was confident I'd find you and I...I just wanted to look my best for you..."

"You seriously thought I wouldn't have wanted you with just the one arm?"

"...Well, no offence Mulder, but you haven't exactly been Mr Touchy-Feely since Siberia; matter of fact I don't see you going out of your way now eithemmmmmph..."

-Although it was Mulder who initiated it by diving towards the desk, both he and Alex moved into the kiss with equal passion, their hands pawing at each other through many layers of insulation and cloth before giving up and pulling each other impossibly closer.

Mulder somehow maneuvered their tangled bodies away from the desk, piloting them over to the window. He took a moment to delight in the play of reflected light from the snowstorm outside on the younger man's pale face and hand, intending to uncover as much of that beautiful pallor as he could.

Seeking out the other man's lips again, Mulder kissed Alex breathless so that any break in contact would not be taken as rejection, and turned away from Alex, putting his hands put flat against the glass and pushing his hips out and back out at the other man in an obvious invitation Alex wasted no time in accepting.

Alex took a brief moment to thank whichever gods looked out for creatures like him

//Loki? Ahura-Mahzda? Moloch?//

that although the Consortium had brought him nothing but mental, physical and emotional pain over the years, at least they had access to the Military/Scientific complex. He brought up his left arm, now free of the cumbersome plastic *thing* he'd had no choice but to go with in Russia.

Mulder noticed at the same time- primarily because Alex, still unused to the new hand, pulled with nerveless fingers at the seam of Mulder's pants- and the whole garment tore free with a sound like a circus tent caught in a tornado.

Mulder whirled round to the sight of Alex looking bemusedly at the long swathe of ripped fabric dangling from gunmetal fingers.

Mulder nodded at the matte grey hand. "New prosthetic?"

Krycek pulled his sleeve back, letting Mulder look at it. "Fully jointed and articulated, realistic movement, accurate lift and heft, lightweight ceramiplastic- they use it instead of glass on diving bells and space shuttles. It's very strong."

Mulder, exploring the the not-quite cool alloy with his own fingers, unhooked what was left of his Goretex pants from the thumb and forefinger. "This is true. You'd think that with all that technology, they'd have a realistic flesh tone."

"...They did have; I told them I didn't want it. This wasn't like the...Parking Garage Incident, Mulder, beyond my control; I'd heard the stories, knew the risks when I went into the camp with you; I lost the arm fair and square through my own carelessness." He raised the prosthetic again, giving Mulder a final look as he re-adjusted his sleeve over it. "...This is a reminder."

Mulder was once again struck by how the complexity of this man who had forced his way into his life and never really left; his dignity and moral code, which, however strange and secret, were firmly in place. Mulder had a feeling that he could spend a lifetime peeling back Alex's layers and never even get close to the man at the centre.

Still, it'd give him something to do in the Winter...

Mulder leaned forward, taking both of Alex's hands in his own and planting a firm kiss on the other man's lips, then he turned around again and replaced his palms on the window. Over his shoulder, he leered at Alex.

"Where were we?"

Alex's pupils have dilated hugely; black orbs swallowing up green, like a Solar Eclipse on Neptune.

"...Face the window again and I'll be happy to remind you..."

When Mulder feels the fingers of the prosthesis

//Not quite-cool and jarringly smooth, like five test tubes stroking his skin)

brush and then clench on the globular muscle of one bare buttock, he draws in a fluttered gasp and turns his eyes to the flailing snow outside to stop himself from coming there and then.

Then the prosthesis withdraws and Alex replaced the artificial hand with his tongue-sinfully alive and burning with a vital, liquid warmth. The younger man swirls the pink, point-tipped muscle about his partner's tight, peppery hole

//Pointed ears *and* pointed tongue? Fuck, Alex, you really *are* the Devil...//

Mulder's choking howl rivals that of the storm outside and rattles the windows just as hard.

* * * 

"...Mulder..."

Slowly pushing off from the sandy floor of sleep, kicking out into the ether

"...Mulder..."

toasty and warm, the feelings of heat coming from both the clothes- Alex's- he has been wrapped in from head to foot, and the husky malt of the man's voice in his ears.

"..Mul...okay, I warned you..."

Mulder opens his sleep-groggy eyes just in time to perceive the small snowball flying at him. Before he has a chance to react, freezing slush is spread all over his mouth and nose.

"Aaaaugh!"

"...Ah good, you're awake." The voice is all innocence. "...I was beginning to think I'd killed you."

Mulder wiped the last frozen dregs from his face and shot daggers at his lover. "You wait until I can remember how my legs work; then you'll wish you did."

God help him, Alex is actually grinning. And naked to the waist. And wearing Mulder's pants.

"...Nah, we're okay, Mulder; but I think we've killed the window."

Both men's semen splattered the glass of the window they'd spent a large part of the past hour fucking in front of.

"Uh-oh."

"...Couldn't be helped. The only way to avoid that would've been to *open* the thing, and I can't exactly see you explaining to the Camp Doctor how you managed to get frostbite *there*..."

"At least it'd give her something to do- I think she's just about reached the point where she's so bored she'll go on a station-wide scalpel rampage just so she can give us all stitches."

Mulder, whilst talking, has shrugged out the clothing Alex had blanketed him with and put it on. He looked over at the other man again. "Thanks Alex; for everything. I'm... I'm glad you're back."

"...Anytime."

"At some point during this conversation, you do intend to tell me why you're bare-chested and wearing my pants, right?"

"...I went on a little snoop-around."

"In my pants?"

"...You'd rather I strutted around the camp naked? Wait-what am I saying? Of course you would."

"But why-"

Alex shrugged. "Seemed like a good idea at the time; you looked cold, so I rugged you up."

"My clothes would have been warm enough.'

"...Spoken like a true American, Mulder. Trust me- you've all got quite a bit to learn about cold." The younger man looks down at Mulder's pants and scoffs "...Goretex, really?!...Those are genuine sealskin trousers and a Scottish cardigan you're wearing Mulder- tell me you've been warmer in your living memory; c'mon- I dare you."

"Did you say seal-skin?"

"...Thinking of bringing out the rectal thermometer again?"

Mulder blushed, grinned, crossed the room and kissed Alex breathless. "How long did I sleep?"

"...Only an hour or two; it's 3am." A glance outside revealed an uninterrupted expanse of white, just the tiniest crack of purple-grey night sky peeking through. "...Not that you'd notice."

Mulder looked at the younger man oddly. "What snooping were you doing at 3am?"

"...I was checking up on your Friendly Neighbourhood Oologist."

"Find any elephants?"

"...Well, it was grey and wrinkly, but I don't think it was an elephant."

"What?"

"...He's a Morph, Mulder."

"Jesus, Alex! Here?!" Mulder paled. "It's here for me?"

"...Did you think that just because those sour old men finally got stepped on that the aliens would just pack up their probes and go home? If anything, they're more dangerous, now that they don't have to share."

"So it's here to what? Interrogate me? Monitor me? Kill me?"

"...I'd say all of the above. Think about it, Mulder; You know about the Consortium, the Resistance, the Clones... You're one big ball of exposure wrapped in an awfully tempting package. And accidents happen at the Poles all the time..."

"Fill me with confidence, why don't you."

Alex grinned indulgently at his lover "...Relax, Special Agent Mulder; have I ever thrown you to the wolves?"

"Well no, but I've been gnawed on by the occasional dhole."

"...I'm not even going to pretend I understand that."

"Nice change; So what're we gonna do about the Morph?"

"...Well, we could always get a flamethrower and a bunch of super-heated copper wires and dip them in vials of its bloo-"

"Alex! Be serious!"

"...Sorry, Mulder, it's just- Y'know- Antarctica, a bunch of scientists, a shapeshifter; it puts me in a B-Grade mood."

"Somehow I can't see you as Kurt Russell, Alex."

"...The facial hair?"

"I was thinking that you look much better in leather."

Alex beamed. "Okay, we'll just go for the icepick to the back of the neck shtick." A quick dip inside the pants pocket, and Alex has produced the small, sharp metal cylinder that is anathema to the Morphs. "...Shall we?"

"Won't somebody somewhere notice Wilkins missing?"

"...Well, he is an Oologist, Mulder; Maybe he got lost in the storm, or an Orca ate him."

"Killer whales have never been recorded attacking humans."

"...A Leopard Seal then. Twelve feet of penguin-shredding pointy teeth. Good enough?"

"And then what? We'll be a scientist short."

"...How do you feel about getting a lab partner?'

Mulder raises a brow. "You know anything about eggs?"

"...I can make a mean Spanish Omelette."

"Alex..."

"...I can get by Mulder; and I know lots about seals."

"Really?"

Alex moves in close to Mulder, nuzzles his neck. "...Male Leopard Seals are the most vicious predators in the Southern Ocean, and yet sometimes they form same-sex pair bonds..."

Mulder shudders as Alex's lip warm his neck-skin. "Gay seals?"

"...Mhhhmmm... They're ruthless killers, but put two males together in a relationship and they...go out of their way to be gentle...suppressing the hunting urge...in favour of an erotic one..."

Mulder licks a path down Alex's chest, then leans back. He looks at his lover, takes in the icepick and Alex's half-naked state and blushes furiously. 

"You know Alex, this reminds me of BASIC INSTINCT."

Alex looks puzzled for a moment, then looks at the icepick in his hand and the penny drops.

"Can the pop-culture riffs, Spooky, C'mon, let's go take care of your Morph."

Mulder bites down on a flip comment, nods, and takes Alex's hand.

Alex, leading them to the door, looks over his shoulder with a wicked emerald gleam. "...And then maybe, when we get back... I'll uncross my legs for you."

 

\----------------------end-----------------------------

**Author's Note:**

> This came about from my lifelong fascination with Antarctica. Hope Humanity doesn't screw it up before I visit!
> 
> The title's from Yeats, an interesting image that juxtaposes nicely with the story setting. It's a lesser known line from that "Rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem" shtick that every published horror novel must include on the inside cover blurb by law.
> 
> Krycek's factoid about same-sex partnered Leopard Seals is actually true. As is the Hypervitaminosis E bit.
> 
> Dedication: As usual, this goes out to Colton Haynes. He knows why :D


End file.
